Chapter 7 - The Ghost from the DocksThat night, a dense coastal fog rolled in, swallowing the estate in a thick, eerie white blanket. Clara sat at her mahogany desk, reviewing financial ledgers and intercepted phone transcripts from the Falconee syndicate, searching for any sign of retaliation.
A soft beep chimed from her secure terminal.
An encrypted file had just been dropped into her local drive from an anonymous source outside the network.
Clara frowned, her fingers flying across the keyboard to decrypt it. A folder opened, containing a single video file and a string of geographical coordinates.
She clicked play.
The video was grainy, shot from a dashcam on a rainy night eleven months ago. It showed the exact dock alley where the brutal ambush had taken place. But as the camera zoomed in on the fleeing getaway car, Clara gasped aloud.
It wasn't just Aldo Falconee in the car. There was a second passenger in the front seat—a man wearing a heavy leather jacket, whose face had been cast in shadow. As the car accelerated under a streetlamp, the passenger turned his head.
Clara froze. The blood drained entirely from her face.
It was Matteo. Adrienne’s most trusted, unshakeable chief enforcer.
Before Clara could even process the horrific implications—that the man guarding Adrienne with his life was actually double-crossing him from the inside—the heavy oak door to her suite clicked open.
Slow, heavy footsteps echoed on the hardwood floor behind her.
"Working late, Clara?"
May you like
It was Matteo’s voice. Smooth, calm, and utterly devoid of warmth.
Clara’s hand slid slowly toward the drawer where she kept a suppressed Browning pistol, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
